HTC releases phone with three-year-old chip

HTC has released its Desire 650 which has nearly identical specs to the Desire 630 that it announced in February 2016 and has a three-year-old same Snapdragon 400 chipset.

I wouldn’t say that the Snapdragon 400 was old, but it first saw action fighting German Zeppelins and remembers the good-old-days when that nice Pope Pius the IX was in the Vatican. It has been out evolved by the Snapdragon 410, 412, 415 425, 427, 430 and 435 and the spinning Jenny.

The Desire 650 does have 16GB store age + microSD slot. It has 2GB of RAM, a front-facing camera (5MP) and a 2200mAh battery. IT does have a modern 5-inch LCD, 1280x720px display and the BoomSound audio features.

To be fair, it was probably copying Apple by releasing a nearly identical phone as last year and offering a device with inferior specs to those available on rival handsets. But HTC is not a happy company and it is probably not going to solve its problems with a stunt like this.

To make matters worse, HTC's promotional site for the 650 showing someone beating its display with a mallet and the device has no 'rugged' capabilities. It might not be demonstrating how strong the phone is, more of a prophecy if you buy it.

Despite the fact that HTC has promised that the phone would have Android 7.0 Nougat in August it looks like it will be shipping with Android 6.0 Marshmallow. For the record the latest number is Android 7.1.1.

The phone will launch in the UK and Europe, in February just in time to be eclipsed by a shedload of new technology arriving at the Mobile World Congress at the end of next month. HTC really does not want to solve its problems.